The Superior Spider-Man was the successor the 700 issue long run of the legendary Amazing Spider-Man. In the last thirty issues the run has gone from being an interesting oddity to my most anticipated read every month. The writer Dan Slott has done a masterful job of crafting this new Spider-man and the world he has built around him. then he has taken his time in knocking down this world. The thing that I have loved about this run in just how well paced its been. In 30 issues there has been absolutely no ‘filler’ or sidetracked adventures its been a single slow and brilliantly told story that has had me on the edge of my proverbial seat since day one.

I think its fair to tell you that even though everything  I am going to talk about in the next few paragraphs has been discussed a lot on this wonderful inter-webbed technological miracle we call the internet, there maybe spoilers ahead.

The premise of the run is that Spider-Mans old enemy Doctor Octopus (Doc Occ) mind swapped his way into Spider-Mans body leaving Peter Parker to die in his busted old husk. Doc Occ decided that now, with Spider-Mans powers and a second chance he was going to live life right, as a hero. The issue has been that as a battle hardened villain he was ‘faking it’ and eventually with ever slipping morality he has devolved issue by issue into a villain once more. Here’s the kicker though, you don’t even notice it happening.

No one actually expected Peter Parker to stay dead, especially when his body is still alive, in typical comic tradition we see the ‘ghost’ of Peter Parker haunt Doc Occ for the first part of the run. Eventually the not so good doctor eradicates the remaining parts of Peter from his mind in the subtle fashion we see all through this book, many issues later we see the first hints of Peters return as a single hand pushed its way out of the rubble in the footer of the pages, and then its not mentioned again for months. Recently thought we have seen Peter once more fighting to be whole once more inside the memories of Doc Occ.

I don’t want to say more than that about the later issues but thanks to the announcement of Amazing Spider-Man issue 1, we pretty much knew for certain that Peter was coming back.

One of my favourite moments in the series took place in the first annual when we saw Spider-Man torture an old enemy, and it was pretty graphic. The actual torture was done off panel but the implied brutality was unnerving. The result was that no bad guy in the city would dare cross ‘Spider-Mans friend Peter Parker in fear of what the Spider psycho would do in retaliation. The side effect was that Aunt May saw the brutality and was left changed by it, and had a renewed fear of the ‘hero’

The other outstanding moment for me was in early on in the run when Doc Occ became infuriated that Parker never got his doctorate and set in motion a plan to earn one. He did it in the most unexpected way. He went to school and studied this is where he met Anna Maria, the love interest for the run who slowly became a more and more integral part of the Doctor/Spider-mans life. this was a fresh break for the run as finally the character was free of the shadow of previous love interests, finally allowing MJ to move on, regardless of how she felt about that.

This run has been wonderful and I have been genuinely please to have been able to read it as its unfolded. I cant wait to see how peter likes the life that Doc Occ has made for him over the last few years. One thing is for sure though, its going to be hard for ANY spider-man story to ever top this one.